Harper House Brings Fujifilm Proofing Under Its Roof

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Press release from the issuing company

HANOVER PARK, Ill., February 2004 – If there ever was a truly one-stop-shop in the graphic communications industry, Harper House is it. Graphic design, photography, traditional prepress, digital and offset printing as well as brand new digital proofing capabilities – customers can get it all at the Dallas, Tex.-based Harper House.
Enovation Graphic Systems, Inc. recently worked with Harper House executives in their selection and installation of two Fujifilm FinalProof digital halftone proofers as well as a two-page Fujifilm PictroProof, completing the proofing overhaul for the 85-year-old company.
“We were in the process of re-evaluating our whole workflow and one of the things we were considering was how we were going to proof,” explains Chris Jackson, vice president at Harper House. “We have a pretty big clientele that still wants to see a halftone dot proof, so we knew we had to go that direction with our new equipment. Ultimately, we decided to go with Fujifilm’s equipment for a few reasons.
“Our workflow is primarily CMYK with some spot colors and the FinalProof looked a lot more stable,” Jackson continues. “It’s also much easier to control and it fit into our workflow a lot better.”
Getting the new equipment in was a challenge, as Jackson says he was on a tight deadline to get the equipment in before the end of the year. But, he adds, thanks to Enovation’s Joe Thornhill and Bob Nordman and the entire Dallas branch staff, the equipment was installed in plenty of time.
“So far, the FinalProof has been very stable,” Jackson reports. “I think it was a very good choice and everyone seems to agree.”
Jackson says he’s always believed that no two machines will ever match, no matter what’s done to them – until now. “We’ve always thought that, so much so that we always specified a job to a specific machine,” he explains. “But, so far, the two FinalProofs are so very close to one another in terms of color that we’re not having to do that anymore, which is giving us much more flexibility in scheduling jobs and gives us peace of mind in case one machine is down.”
Show Me Some Proof
In addition to providing customers with a full-range of prepress capabilities, Harper House also has a complete in-house creative department and is capable of taking customers from concept all the way through print under one roof.
“We have several retouchers and color correctors that work on files from clients as well as from our own creative department and they needed to be able to see a hard copy proof of what they’ve done. That’s where we’re using the PictroProof. It’s much faster and far less expensive than the FinalProof for proofing at this stage of the process,” he says. “We also want to replace what we’ve been doing with another machine we have. We have some clients who don’t have the requirements of seeing a halftone proof in order to give their approval for a job.”
Harper House is a high-end color graphic service provider that started as a photo engraving company in 1919. A commitment to quality is as important to the Harper House tradition as being on the forefront of new technology. The company has a strong history of implementing new technologies early on, including the use of scanners in the early 1970s, full color electronic prepress in the early 1980s, desktop publishing and a postscript workflow in 1989-1990.
With the addition of the creative and photography departments to its prepress and printing divisions, Harper House has become a truly one-stop-shop. “Now, we can take a project through every piece of the process,” Jackson says. “We talk with our customers about their marketing needs, present them with concepts, do all of the design work and then carry it through the prepress process, ready it for print and follow it through our pressroom.”